


Real Life

by Cordria



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-12
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23611453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cordria/pseuds/Cordria
Summary: What if was real? (originally posted to fanfiction.net starting in 2007)
Comments: 28
Kudos: 87





	1. Heroes Are Not Born, They Are Made

**Author's Note:**

> Newly edited. And perhaps it's because I have new chapters. Perhaps. :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited 4/2020

In _real life_ , there is no such thing as a superhero.

In _real life_ , the innocent get targeted more often than not.

In _real life_ , people can't be put into nice, little categories of good or evil.

In _real life_ , the line between right and wrong blurs into nonexistence.

In _real life_ …

* * *

Danny's basement door - painted Day-Glo orange, the words 'Fenton Laboratory Keep Out' stenciled in black letters - creaked loudly as it opened. Sam's chipped, black-painted fingernail flicked a light switch, a dangling light bulb illuminating a steep stairwell headed into the basement. "The infamous _lab_ ," she said, "you're finally going to let us see it?"

"There's nothing to see," Danny muttered as he pushed past her and clumped down the stairs. "It's just a basement."

Sam bit back a tiny smile as Tucker brushed past her. She had seen the tiny flush that had crept onto Danny's face at the mention of his parents' _laboratory_.

"But it's _the_ basement!" Tucker was almost stepping on Danny's heels by this point, craning his head to try and see around the corner at the bottom. "You've been dropping hints about this place since elementary school – I'm dying to see it!"

Danny shot Sam a glance and rolled his eyes. She carefully made her way down the steps, just as excited as Tucker to see the 'insane' inventions, but not nearly as willing to risk tripping and falling. Danny reached the bottom and flipped a light switch. Brilliant light burst into existence, spilling into the shadowy recesses of the stairs.

"Come on," Tucker continued as he tripped down the last few stairs, "it's got to be interesting; your parents design secret weapons for the government…" he trailed off as he stepped around the corner, his eyes widening.

Sam grinned at his speechlessness for a moment before she glanced around the wall that separated the stairs from the lab. "Whoa," she whispered.

Illuminated by dozens of mismatched lamps and fluorescent bulbs, the walls and ceiling were covered in aluminum foil that had been stapled and duct-tapped and was peeling in places. Rickety garage-style metal shelves lined the walls and formed narrow aisles along the left side of the room. Huge tables took up most of the open space in the middle of the room, and to the right was a large circle of steel built into the wall. And everywhere there were _things_ : blenders, toasters, fans, televisions, radios and computers, boxes of wires, old phones, broken toys, and at least one ancient refrigerator. Everything was piled haphazardly on the shelves or stuffed into overflowing boxes. Cascading from the tables, the wiry corpses of the least-fortunate electronics sat in half-taken-apart chaos.

"We never come down here because it's a death trap," Danny sighed. "Watch out for the black shelves – they tend to collapse if you breathe on them wrong."

"Wow," Tucker whispered, poking at something with wires sticking everywhere.

Sam snorted and folded her arms. "I guess I can't complain about you not recycling anymore. Your parents are doing a wonderful job."

"Let's just find that stupid game and get out of here. We're not supposed to be down here." Danny slipped between two folding tables covered in the remains of at least two vacuum cleaners and made his way over to the shelving units. "Where do you think they put it?" He grabbed a step stool and disappeared down the narrow aisle between two shelving units.

Sam leaned against the end of one of the old shelves, dust accumulating on her black shirt from the long-forgotten boxes. Brushing herself off, her elbow knocked against an old thermos that had been perched on one of the shelves. It wobbled, crashed to the floor, and rolled under a shelf.

Danny's voice echoed from the shelves. "Can you make sure that gets picked up?"

"Why?" Sam raised a skeptical eyebrow. "What's one more thermos on the ground?"

"My parents are on an inventing streak. If you leave it on the floor there's a chance they'll try to make it into some kind of rocket or inter-dimensional container or something and we'll end up drinking radioactive hot chocolate next winter. Anything on the floor is considered fair game."

She stared at the shelving unit that hid the thermos. "It's that bad?"

There was the sound of soft laughter. "Last fall my parents messed with the stove, and do you remember what happened to the turkey we had at Thanksgiving? Same thing."

Tucker sighed happily and nodded, but Sam shivered and grimaced. She remembered that dinner fiasco _perfectly_. "That's one of the reasons why I chose to become a vegan last year."

"What was wrong with it?" Tucker muttered as he picked up a half-together radio and fiddled with the wires, "It was delicious."

Danny poked his head out of the aisle to stare at him for a second, blinking, before shaking his head. "It was glowing and levitating, Tucker. You and Dad were the only two people that dared to eat it."

Tucker shrugged. "So? It was good."

Danny grabbed a new box to look through, and Sam bent down to pick up the fallen thermos. Crouched on the floor, reaching under the shelf to grab the thermos, a sparkle caught her eye. Squinting through the densely-piled junk that littered the lab, Sam studied the large, round object that was built into a wall on the other side of the lab. It was a hole in the wall, perhaps six feet around and about six feet deep, jumbled with wires and metal bits and surrounded by thick metallic plates and electronics. Sam, retrieving the thermos from under the shelf, stood up. "What's that?"

"What's what?" Danny asked distractedly. "Yes!" He pulled the dusty game out of the battered box and held it up in triumph, he knocking into another box sitting dangerously close to the edge and sending it tumbling to the ground. Old fishing equipment clattered loudly as it fell into a jumbled mess at the base of the stool. "Darn it!"

"That." Sam pointed at the portal.

Danny glanced at the round hole and sighed. "Oh, that. My parents are working on it. It's supposed to be some kind of TV thing where you can see the 'other side'."

"Other side?" Sam asked, curious.

"You know... ghosts and stuff."

Sam knew that Danny's parents were part-time 'ghost hunters' – the thought that this might be one of their paranormal inventions made her smile. She loved spooky ghost stories.

Tucker set a broken radio on the table. "Does it work?"

"No," Danny snorted. "Of course not. It's one of my parent's 'ghost' inventions. You know how well those things work."

Tucker shrugged. "Come on, Danny – your parents are brilliant inventors. They get into all sorts of science magazines and their 'secret' government stuff works really well. Didn't they get that hovercraft thing working?"

"The speeder? I suppose _that_ worked okay, but none of their ghost stuff ever works. Besides the fact that there're no ghosts to _find,_ their ghost inventions all use psychotropic triggers – you know, the idea that if you _believe_ that something will work, it will."

"I'm still surprised you know what psychotropic means," Tucker grinned.

Danny jumped off the step stool, scowling down at the pile of fishing equipment on the floor. "Well, I had to look it up..."

"And then you had to have Jazz tell you what you looked up," Sam added, snickering. Her grin only grew when her best friend switched his glower from the mess on the floor to his friends.

"Still. _None_ of their stupid ghost inventions work."

Sam shook her head and took a few steps towards the portal, unable to take her eyes off it. "Can we go look at it?"

"You know my parents don't want us down here. We'll get 'the speech' if they get home and find us in the lab." He slid out from between the rickety shelves with the newly-found game in his hands and glanced around.

"The speech?" Tucker asked.

"It's dangerous; you'll get electrocuted; you might die; etcetera, etcetera…" Danny muttered in a horrible impression of his father. "It takes about three hours, depending on who gives it."

Sam nodded, still gazing at the portal. "But can we see it?"

"Uh..." Danny sounded dubious, obviously wanting to head back upstairs, but Sam and Tucker both started to beg at the same time.

"Please? Pretty please?"

Sighing, Danny gave in. "Sure, fine. For a minute."

Sam worked her way over to the portal, still absently holding the thermos she had picked up. "It'd be so cool if it really worked, you know. We'd get to see ghosts and dead people and…"

"You are so Goth," Tucker pronounced, following a step behind her.

Sam glared at him and punched him in the shoulder. "Why doesn't it work?"

Shaking his head, Danny said, "You mean other than the fact that you have to _believe_ it'll work in order for it to turn on?" He paused with one eyebrow raised, studying the mess of wires. "Come on, Sam – no amount of _belief_ will make this thing work. You can't make a portal that'll show you the afterlife."

Tucker nodded. "But it'd still be fun if it did work."

"Yeah, totally," Danny said. "To get to see what's on the other side? That'd be fantastic. But it's never going to work."

A small grin flickered across Sam's face. "So it'll never work… but you definitely have to go in so I can get a picture for my scrapbook."

"Me?" Danny asked.

Sam nodded, her smile firmly in place. "It's _your_ basement." She gestured with the thermos.

"It's my _parent's_ lab."

Tucker crossed his arms and joined the argument. "They're _your_ parents."

Danny looked from one to the other. "I'm not going to get to go upstairs and continue pretending my parents are normal until I do this, huh?"

Both shook their heads, identical smiles on their faces. "Picture, picture, picture," Tucker chanted.

Danny scowled and thrust the game at Tucker, making him wince when a corner dug into his chest. "Hold this," he muttered as he turned to dig through a discarded box next to the portal, pull out a set of ugly white clothes, and shake off a layer of dust.

"What's that?" Tucker asked in horror.

Sam winced. "Yeah, it's a fashion disaster – and that's saying something coming from me."

Danny held it up and sighed. "It's called a 'clean suit' or something. If I get any kind of dust or hair or something on their 'precious experiments', I'll never hear the end of it. The 'contaminating the lab' lecture was last timed at over five hours, and they've probably come up with some new stuff since then. So shut it." He yanked the white pants on over his jeans and threw the jacket over his shirt, not bothering with the myriad of buttons.

While Danny snapped a black belt around his waist to hold the baggy pants up, Sam studied the disaster of a lab. There was dust and debris everywhere. "They care about dirt?" she whispered to herself.

"Don't ask," Danny muttered. "Trust me on this one: it's not worth asking."

Tucker snickered. "Well, if you die, at least you'll look stupid."

With a glare, Danny stepped onto the small bit of floor inside the portal that wasn't covered in wires and cords, then turned around to pose for the picture.

Sam set the thermos down on a nearby table and pulled off her backpack to dig for her camera. "You've got your dad's head on your jacket."

Glancing down, Danny wrinkled his nose when he spotted the cartoon-ish face of his father stuck to his jacket pocket. "Ever since he got these stupid stickers, he's been sticking them on everything." He ripped off the Fenton sticker, wadded it into a tiny ball, and threw it in the general direction of the trash can on the other side of the room. "Better?"

She nodded and grinned. "So? Do you think they'll ever get it to actually work?"

Danny shook his head. "I don't think they even know where to start right now. They were really depressed that it wasn't working. I think they gave it their best shot already."

Tucker chuckled. "Maybe you have to _believe_ that it'll work."

Danny laughed. "Yeah, the great Danny Fenton," he posed heroically with his hands at his waist, taking on a dramatic tone, "fated to save the world by turning on his parents' crazy, lame-ass ghost portal!" He grinned, letting his hands drop and shaking his head in disbelief. "Got that picture yet, Sam?"

Tucker snapped a picture with his phone while Sam was fiddling with settings on her camera. "Yeah, and it'll be all over the school by the end of the week. Maybe sooner."

"Hey!" Danny lunged at Tucker just as Sam's camera flashed. His feet caught on the wires and he fell against the portal wall. Pushing himself back upright, his hand hit a small button. There was a distinct 'click' that echoed through the lab.

As he heard the small click of the button, a worried thought jumped up from deep within his mind. _Could a ghost portal really work?_ And, for just a split second, he truly believed that one could.

That was all it took.

The greatest invention Jack and Maddie Fenton would ever build whirred to life amongst the startled screams of the three teenagers. Danny was swallowed in a flash of painful light.

* * *

-In _real life_ , heroes are not born, they are _made_.

(end prologue)


	2. In Which There Are No Such Things as Ghosts

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *edited 4/2020*
> 
> I deleted nearly a thousand word from the last draft (1 out of every 6 words!). I probably could have cleaned it up more if I spent more time on it, but the point of this edit isn't a beautiful clean draft - it's simply to make the transition from 'I wrote this chapter ten+ years ago' to 'I wrote this chapter now, with a lot more practice in' a little less obvious. I was really, really wordy ten years ago.

Sam stared at the creature that stumbled out of the portal, completely transfixed, her heart pounding a million miles a second, terror-driven adrenaline pumping through her body. The thing's skin was savaged and darkened with painful-looking burns. Shockingly white hair stood straight up from its head, greenish energy still sizzling between the spikes. Curls of smoky steam swirled upwards from the ragged remains of its black pants, silver-white shirt, and unbuttoned black jacket. It collapsed onto the ground in a crouch and held up its trembling hands.

Her mouth moved, trying to talk, trying to do something – _anything_ – as a cold breeze blew down her back. Sam shivered, unable to wrench her eyes away from the creature gazing at its palms. When it flipped one of its hands over to examine the back, she caught a glimpse of a harsh, smoldering wound that stretched from wrist to fingers. A flicker of jade lightning zapped around its fingers.

Her back bumped into a table, knocking the random inventions around, only know realizing she had been slowly backing away from this creature. It looked up, green eyes accented by dark bruised circles, focusing on her. She gasped, her eyes widening even further – she could see the the wall _through_ the creature's head.

"Sam?" it muttered faintly. It had an odd reverberation in its voice, almost like it was yelling from far away.

The hair on her arms stood up and her knees trembled as an instinctive desire to run away from this _thing_ flooded through her. But she couldn't look away from the eerie eyes that had captured hers. There was something familiar about those eyes…

Suddenly it hit her. "Danny!" she gasped, her hand flying to her mouth in horrified surprise. Beside her, Tucker sank to the ground, a moan escaping from between his lips.

"What?" Danny asked, narrowing his eyes before glancing back down at his hand. "It's so weird, it doesn't even really hurt any more," he added softly, flipping his hand over and over, prodding the angry red burn with his finger.

"D-dude," Tucker stuttered. "I-I think… I think you might be dead."

Danny looked up at them with an arched eyebrow. "What?" he asked again. "Are you nuts? I'm not dead."

Sam couldn't think of anything to say to that and, from the silence, neither could Tucker. The only thing she could do was point to the mirror on the wall with a trembling finger. He got to his feet and staggered across the room, his white shoes seeming to hover a tiny bit above the floor. She couldn't help it – she edged away from him as he passed. Tucker, still stilling on the ground, scooted backwards until he was pressed against her legs.

Danny reached the mirror and stared into it, holding perfectly still for the longest of seconds. His fingers were clamped by his sides, his arms shaking visibly.

"I think you're a ghost," Tucker whispered.

Danny shook his head, fizzled hair flying and settling down in a slightly-more normal pattern. "Ghosts don't exist, Tuck." He glanced at them once over his shoulder before he turning back to the mirror. "Ghosts don't exist," he muttered darkly.

"Danny?" she rasped. She could see the growing terror and panic in his face.

"Ghosts don't exist. I'm not dead," he answered, shaking his head again. His eyes closed, his fingers clenched into tight fists, his whole body shook. "I'm not dead, I'm not dead, I'm not dead…" he was muttering it over and over, almost like a mantra.

Sam pushed herself away from the table, forcing her feet to take a few steps closer towards him. Ghost or not, this was her best friend. Fear was warring with her brain, her instincts screaming at her to run away as fast as she could. Trembling, she took another step, reaching up her hand to touch his shoulder. "Danny?"

" _I'm not dead!_ " he yelled as emerald energy suddenly flared in existence around him. Its freezing fire scorched Sam's fingers. As the mirror shattered and inventions all around the room rattled and cascaded from tables, she lost what little control she had over her body.

She ran.

* * *

Danny wasn't aware of when his friends left. His eyes closed and he backed away from the mirror, shaking his head desperately.

He did _not_ believe what he had just seen. He was not a ghost; he was not dead. It wasn't possible.

Clenching his fingers, he froze in place with one thought coursing through his head. If only he could find his heartbeat, then he'd know that he was alive. His whole being centered on finding that singular sound. He stood still, head tipped to the side, listening in growing terror to the silence that was inside of him.

As the silence stretched on for an infinitely long moment, his hands started to shake and his toes curled up. He closed his eyes harder, squeezing them shut to the point of pain, hands coming up to block his ears. He wasn't listening hard enough. That had to be the problem.

He wrapped himself in the desire to be human: to be warm and heavy, to feel the comforting rhythms of life swirling around inside of him. "Please," he begged. "Please…" Then an instinct that he had possessed for a whole of thirty seconds swam into his head, directing his thoughts, reaching for a place in his mind that was filled with that longed-for life.

A tingling pain slammed into existence in his chest and it rushed around him in all directions like a wave, reaching down to the end of his toes and the tips of his fingers before it rebounded and crashed back together in his heart. The pain grew in intensity until sharp needles ripped through him. It reached a point where Danny didn't think he could take a single moment more…

And...

 _Thump-thump._ The sound of his heart made Danny's already weak legs collapse underneath him and a too-long-held breath gushed out of his lungs. He sat on the floor, reveling in the return of his heartbeat and the ebbing ache, letting air rush in and out of his lungs. Eventually he opened his eyes, looking up into what remained of the cracked mirror and dreading what he would see.

Black hair. Blue eyes. Completely solid. Not a ghost at all.

"What?" he rasped, pushing himself to his feet and carefully stepping over sharp bits of mirror that littered the floor. He gazed at his reflection in amazement for a moment before turning around.

The lab was trashed. Tables were overturned, inventions scattered in every direction. Two of the shelves on the other side of the room had tipped over and were a chaotic mess. His head swiveled almost against his will as he glanced over at the where the his parents' portal in the wall should have been. Instead of a wire-filled hole, there was a mass of swirling green.

He took a step towards the ethereal lights, a hand coming up to brush the foggy surface. It was like touching a cloud. His hand tingled and ached as it held it against the portal into the realm of the afterlife. Fingers became translucent and a huge burn mark slowly appeared on his palm. He stared, horrified and amazed, watching the tips of the clean suit's sleeves begin to tinge black.

"NO!" he gasped, pushing at the encroaching black. He stumbled away from the table, yanking the white coat off and throwing it across the room. Swept up in his fear, he didn't notice his hand fade back into reality as he yanked the clean suit pants off of his legs, leaving him in his normal jeans and shirt. Free of the white outfit, he scrambled backwards away from it.

"No, no, no," he panted as he raced for the stairs. The forgotten thermos appeared under his foot about half-way across the room and he tripped. Yelping at the pain that sliced through his ankle, he picked up the thermos and tossed it angrily towards the wall. It slapped into the wall inches from the supernatural portal.

Just for a second, he saw two eyes gleam back at him from the portal.

Terror spiked, and Danny threw himself towards the stairs, never noticing that his feet were passing straight through the scattered inventions on the floor.

* * *

Sam sank into her soft bed and choked back desperate sobs. She had raced her shadow home, blown past her startled parents, and locked herself into her room. She was sobbing – both from lack of breath and from the terror that was clawing at her mind. Burying her head into her pillows, she didn't give a second thought to the eyeliner and mascara that smeared all over. She had seen… she had seen…

Danny was dead.

That shy, blue-eyed boy had been her best friend since forth grade. The two of them had grown up with each other, laughing their way through their troubles with Tucker by their side. Danny was the only person who knew most of her secrets, the only person who had never judged her when she had proclaimed herself a gothic vegan. He had always been there to laugh with her and make her smile. He was the only person who had ever seen her truly fall apart and cry.

Now he was dead, and it had been _her fault_.

Almost unaware of what she was doing, she got up and walked across the room, her hands scrabbling at one of the drawers. Fingers curled around a small bottle and she stared at it. Her hands shook for a moment as they tightened around the bottle of antidepressants.

Then, with a curse, she threw the bottle across the room. The lid snapped off and small brown pills scattered around her bedroom. She stood still for a moment, tears beginning to slide down her cheeks. Her shaking legs carried her back to collapse on the bed.

A sob wrenched itself out of her, breaking the fragile dam that had been holding her together. Her crying became so frantic and hysterical that she couldn't find the room to get a breath in.

There was no doubt in her mind as to whom the blame fell upon: it had been her idea to go into that stupid hole and Danny had resisted. She had known that he would do anything if she asked.

 _She_ had asked. And now he was _dead_.

Sam curled up into a tight ball on her bed. She didn't know what to do. She ought to go do something… she should tell someone… Tears slid unchecked down her cheeks, smearing the remnants of her thick mascara and making little black spots on the sheets as her manic sobbing degenerated into tortured crying. Her brain replaying bits of Danny's death over and over.

_The bright flash of light._

_The way he looked when he came out._

_The burned, dead skin._

_The hollow, lifeless eyes._

_The shattering mirror._

Tucker...

For a moment, she wondered where he had gone. She pulled her head out of her pillow, half-searching for her phone. She could vaguely remember him racing up the lab stairs behind her. But a flicker of memory… _a_ _sizzling, smoking hand_ … and all thoughts of Tucker were banished as she buried her head back into her pillow.

At some point, Sam cried herself to sleep.

* * *

She moaned and rolled over in her warm bed, closing her eyes against the brilliant morning light peaking through her windows. A bird chipped from a tree outside. She stretched and yawned, rolling onto her back before allowing herself to open her eyes. She traced the cracks on the ceiling for a few minutes as she finished waking up. Something was off, but her sleep-muddled brain was having a tough time figuring it out.

She sat up, realizing she was still dressed, lying on top of her blankets. She rubbed her wrist and gazed around the room, struggling to remember. Her pillows were smeared with black lines from her mascara… 

Memory flooded into her mind and Sam's eyes widened. "Danny!" Her heart racing, she sat on the edge of her bed and shook her head, running a hand over her face. "Danny…"

"Was it even real?" she whispered. "Ghosts don't exist." She closed her eyes, her heart slowed down its frantic beating. Taking a deep breath, she steadied herself and glanced out the window at the bright morning sunshine. "That had to have been a nightmare. Danny'll be at school this morning, just like normal."

She pushed herself to her feet and stumbled towards her bedroom door, hesitating when she noticed it was locked. Her eyes flickered over to the mirror. Her normally frizzy, black-dyed hair was an untamable mess and the remnants of yesterday's makeup were still smeared on her face. 

"Danny's fine. He'll be in class." She nodded, unlocking the door and slipping tiredly down the steps to get breakfast.

Sam's mother, sitting at the table eating a bowl of cold cereal and reading the newspaper, glanced up when Sam entered the kitchen. She gasped, "Sammy! What's wrong?"

Sam shook her head and silently grabbed a bowl. "I'm fine," she said, her voice hoarse.

"No you're not. Your eyes are all red and… you've been crying. What happened?"

 _A flash of light. Hollow, lifeless eyes_.

Sam blinked back the burning sensation in her eyes. "Nothing," she whispered. "I'm fine."

"It was that Fenton boy, wasn't it," her mother accused. "I've never liked him, you know. He's got that insane family. If he's hurt you…"

"He didn't hurt me," she flared, suddenly angry. Of all the people to pick on this morning, she chose to pick on him. "He never has, and he never will! Can't you just leave him alone?"

Her mother was quiet for a moment. "Maybe you should stay home from school today, Sam. I'll call you in sick. You don't look well."

Sam finished pouring herself a bowl of cereal and shook her head. There was no way she wanted to be home today. She wanted to go listen to some mind-rotting lessons at school and not have to think about that awful dream she had suffered through last night. "No, I just had a nightmare is all. I'll be fine after I take a shower."

"Are you sure, sweetheart?"

Sam nodded and scooped a spoonful of cereal into her mouth.

* * *

Sam moved through the corridors of Casper High school, searching for the familiar black head of her best friend. Actually, either friend would do for her at the moment – she needed some sort of confirmation that last night had been the dream she was praying it had been. Although neither boy was around, the lack of people staring at her like her best friend had just died was a positive.

Outside her first period class, she stopped. Both Danny and Tucker were in her first hour class and going through that door would be the ultimate test. She took another step and hesitated. Her heart beat faster than usual and she felt a little light headed. What would she do if they weren't there?

The door swung open as one of the other students slumped into the room. Her eyes flickered to the back of the room, glancing at the seats that had been unofficially claimed as 'theirs'. In one seat was a boy with messy black hair and a white T-shirt: Danny. Sam sighed and walked into the classroom, feeling her heart slow down its racing. It _had_ just been a dream.

She slid into the open seat next to the boy that had died in her nightmare. He didn't look up, his hair dangling in his eyes. He was sketching in the margin of his notebook, waiting dismally for school to start. "Danny," she hissed at him.

He looked up. Sam gasped and fought back a shiver. His sky-blue eyes had an impossible, inhuman shine to them, but beyond the strange glow was nothing. His eyes were dead and hollow.

Sam's heart seemed to stop and her breath caught in her throat, knowing deep down in her soul that this _thing_ sitting beside her wasn't alive. He was just gazing at her with those lifeless eyes, sitting too still to be real – frozen – nothing more than a statue.

Then he blinked and broke the spell. "Hey Sam," he grinned. The smile brought his haunting eyes back to life. 

She stared at him in disbelief. There he was, suddenly real as anything and most definitely not dead. What was going on? Had she just imagined that?

"What's wrong?" he asked softly as the bell rang. "You're so white."

Sam couldn't think of what to say. Danny squinted at her, the life washing out of his eyes again as he leaned towards her and sniffed. "You smell like…" he drifted off before shaking his head and sending her a grin. "Sorry, I'm spazzing today. Do you know what happened to Tucker?"

She wordlessly shook her head.

Last night hadn't been a nightmare. Something was terribly, horribly wrong.

* * *

Danny dropped his eyes to his notebook at the teacher droned away in the front of the class. By this point, the margins were covered in badly-drawn images of bats and rats and other small creatures. The ferret-like thing he was currently drawing was perched on the empty desk next to Paulina, its translucent head tipped to the side, two glowing orange eyes that fixed on the girl.

Strangely, nobody had said a thing about the creature.

As he put the final few pencil marks on his sketch of the ferret, a small smile slipped onto his face. "I'm officially insane," he muttered. If it had just been that he was seeing a ferret nobody else was seeing, he might have been able to pass it up as lack of sleep. Or maybe even a by-product of the shock he'd gotten last night. But it wasn't just the ferret-thing, all throughout the school there were things: see-through shadow-bats that flitted along the ceiling, greenish rats that raced through the hallways and up the walls, and strange blue-red snake-things that curled up in corners and under desks. The entire school was _crawling_ with tiny, intangible creatures.

None of which had been there yesterday, and none of which anybody else seemed to be able to see today. To make it even worse, he could only see the things out of the corner of his eye. The minute he tried to look straight at them, they vanished. 

Danny took a deep breath as he tried not to glance at latest shadowy thing that fluttered at the edge of his vision. His pencil moved distractedly as he began another sketch – this one of a long, thin creature that entwined itself under Dash Baxter's desk. Really, the only thing that kept him from jumping out of his seat and screaming at the top of his lungs was the steady scrape of his pencil on the paper.

Halfway through the sketch, _it_ happened for the fourth time that morning. The paper in front of him faded and glazed over. He blinked a few times, but nothing changed. He sighed – it hadn't helped earlier either. Danny unhappily added this onto his list of other weird things going on today. The last few times it had vanished within a few seconds.

He waited, but the paper and his pencil stayed unfocused. A blur of green moved just before his eyes and he glanced up.

It took all his willpower to stay in his seat and not scream. Every person in the room had become an unfocused blur of color, the walls and posters a fuzzy mess in the background. Everything seemed to not really be _there_ … almost like he could walk straight through things. But the creatures were suddenly all too real. Under Dash's desk, the snake jumped into focus, every maggot and bloody gash showing in the supernatural light. The ferret sitting next to Paulina had taken on a stomach-twisting aura as its half-eaten body shifted on the desk and turned its head to gaze at him. It opened its mouth and let out a hissing shriek in his direction.

A strangled scream struggled out of his mouth as he flailed away from the creature. He fell out of his chair. Above the snarling hisses of the _things_ in the room, a low sound boomed around him. Danny blinked up at a large tan and blue blur that was standing over him.

The odd sound rumbled again through the air, impossible to make out. Then…

_Blink_

…everything was back to normal.

"Mr. Fenton!"

Danny looked around. The snake and the ferret were back to their transparent forms, the clock was once again ticking loudly in the dead silence, and all the students in the class were staring at him. He licked his lips nervously. "Sorry," he whispered.

The teacher squatted down. "Are you okay, Mr. Fenton?"

Danny's glanced at the creatures that only he could see. Hallucinations. "I… I'm fine," he stuttered.

Mr. Lancer didn't look convinced. "Would you like to go to the nurse? You look a little pale."

Shaking his head, Danny pushed himself to his feet and slipped back into his desk. "I'm fine," he repeated a little more firmly.

The teacher stared at him for a moment before turning around and walking back up to the front of the class. Danny sank into his seat and let out a shaky breath. He felt a tap on his arm and he looked up to find Sam watching him with a worried expression on her face. "I'm fine," he whispered. Sam's eyes narrowed, but she turned back to her notes.

Forcing himself to not look up again, Danny picked up his pencil with fingers that were still shaking. He closed his eyes for a second and took a deep breath, trying to settle his impossibly fast heart beat.

As he started sketching again, he failed to notice the fact that one student's gaze had not looked away from him yet. Valerie Gray bit her lip as she studied her classmate. Finally her green eyes flickered over to the empty desk next to Paulina and then down to her notebook. Tiny drawings of half-eaten ferrets were dancing around the edges. With a sigh, she continued to doodle.

* * *

He stood up when the bell rang, trying his hardest not to watch the creatures moving around with the students.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a fox slip out through the wall and sniff the air. Beady eyes opened and it fell into step just behind Sam, its nose inches away from Sam's hiking boots. Every few steps the mangy fox would misjudge the distance between its nose and Sam's feet and a boot heel would pass through its head. It wasn't until Sam was quite a few steps ahead of him that he realized he'd stopped. "Sam..."

"What?" she asked, turning around. She looked down at her shoes. "Do I have something on my shoes?" She picked up one of her feet – her boot going through the fox's chest – and checked the bottom of her shoe.

Danny shook his head. "No… it's…" He just trailed off, giving her a small smile. "It's nothing."

She set her foot back down and sent him an odd look. "Are you alright?"

"Good question," he mumbled, setting back off up the hallway. Sam fell into step next to him.

Suddenly it happened again. Everything 'real' became slightly transparent and fell out of focus, human voices slipped away. Tiny ripples of _something,_ flooding out of all the humans like heartbeats, swirled into existence. Noises – impossible combinations of chitters, hisses, caws, and shrieks – flooded into his ears as dozens of conflicting smells assaulted his nose. Sam seemed to be giving off the enchanting smell of rainbows after a spring thunderstorm.

The fox jumped into clear view, its bushy tail and quivering ears stiffening as it gazed up at him. Now he could see that the creature's fur was clumped, matted, and falling apart, and there was a gaping, bloody hole in the fox's chest. It made a confused hissing-bark noise.

Danny and the fox stared each other down. The fox made that hiss-bark sound again and Danny knew, somehow, that the fox was _feeding_ off of those strange waves that Sam was giving off. It was an instinctive knowledge that rocked him to his core; something he couldn't deny or explain. He just _knew_. He couldn't let that happen – not to Sam.

From somewhere deep inside of him, a growl built up and slipped out his mouth: _stay away_. The fox's ears dropped back against its skull and it slithered backwards a few feet, crouched as close to the ground as possible.

Then it vanished, along with almost every other creature he could see. Danny blinked, the 'real' world dropping back into focus and he glanced up. Sam was talking about whether or not she should do her report on Jane Addams or Eugene Victor Debs.

"…Do you think so, Danny?"

He blinked at her. "What?"

"Danny..." She had her hands on her hips, her normal gruff exterior exposed for the world to see, but Danny knew her well enough that he could see the worry and concern flickering in her eyes. "What happened last…"

"Nothing. I'm fine," he interrupted.

She stared at him for a few seconds, eventually turning and walking down the hallway, silent.

Danny trailed after her until their paths diverged. He hesitated outside his classroom, watching her walk away. A shadow-bat fluttered down and swooped around her head for a moment before vanishing through a hallway wall. "What's wrong with me?" he whispered.

* * *

Sam couldn't keep her eyes off of him. He would vacillate between normal Danny and dead Danny at the drop of a hat. Normal Danny was the same laughing, easy going guy she had known for years. He smiled and joked and wrote her notes when he thought the teacher wasn't looking. The other Danny was creepy. He would lose all the light in his eyes and gaze off into nothingness. Sometimes he would seem to be following some invisible _thing_ with his eyes, watching whatever-it-was drift around the room.

The other Danny never looked _at_ her - he always looked _through_ her, like she wasn't really there. Whenever they had to sit next to each other, he got too close. He would lean into her and watch her carefully, never really smiling. She had eaten lunch with this other Danny. Well, she had eaten her salad and Danny had stared through her silently, not saying a word or bothering to touch the goop on his lunch tray. Throughout lunch, it had taken most of her willpower to stop from turning around to see what it was he was looking at every few minutes. 

All it would take was a blink, sometimes, for that light to shine through and for the normal Danny to be back. He'd grin at her, shake his head with a small laugh, and ask her if she was okay. Each and every time, she'd simply nod her head and say nothing. 

She never managed to talk about what had happened last night.

The end of the day was approaching when she finally dropped into the desk next to him for Language Arts. Normal Danny flicked a smile in her direction, rolling his eyes as the teacher took roll. When the class started, normal Danny doodled away in his notebook.

Sam gazed at him during this last class, not even bothering to pretend to listen. She was still trying to figure out what was going on with him. He was holding his pencil loosely in his fingers, wiggling the pencil eraser back and forth distractedly as he half-listened to the teacher.

She sat up a little straighter, wrinkling her forehead. Something strange was happening to Danny's restless hand. It had started at his fingertips – a vague translucency, the color draining from his fingers that oozed along his fingers. When it reached the part of his hand that held the pencil, the pencil dropped straight _through_ his hand and clunked onto the desk.

It took a moment for him to notice, but when the lack of pencil caught his attention, he glanced down. The translucency had spread nearly to his wrist. His eyes widened and he thrust his hand under his desk. To Sam's surprise, his hand went _through_ the desk on the way. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he finally brought his hand back onto the desk, he examined it carefully before grabbing his pencil again.

Suddenly he wrinkled his nose, glancing over at her with those dead eyes. Other Danny was back, and he _knew_ she had seen something. They locked eyes – haunted blue into worried purple. Sam was the one that looked away first, taking a shaky breath. Her insides felt cold… almost like someone had taken a dead hand and raked through her intestines.

Glancing at him one last time, Sam noticed that he hadn't looked away from her yet. His eyes glittered with worry, fear, and confusion.

What had happened to him?

* * *

-In _real life_ , there are no such things as ghosts.

(end chapter 1)


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